David Griffin Photography

Maynard Business Alliance Concert #2

Dave — Wed, 16 May 2012 20:08:05 +0000

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The Maynard Business Alliance, which as you might guess from its name, works to promote business in Maynard. A big focus of the group is making our downtown a destination for people – particularly those outside of Maynard. The MBA is sponsoring three free concerts in May, held on Saturday afternoon. The third and final concert is May 19th from 4-6pm — come listen!
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May 2012 Wallpaper

Dave — Wed, 09 May 2012 22:41:05 +0000

I know, it’s almost a third through May already… Hey, it has been a busy month with more madness ahead.

I started up the pond last week and was rewarded with watching one of the local Orioles take a bath. This year they are numerous and quite vocal. Here’s a shot from a couple of years ago at our pond.

If you like the above image you can download it to your computer and use it as your desktop or tablet wallpaper. A few of the common screen sizes are available:

Download the 1024×768 version here. (Perfect for your iPad)

Download the 1280×1024 version here.

Download the 1680×1050 version here.

Technical Stuff: Canon 40D, 500mm f/4. Processed with Lightroom 4 – basic exposure and sharpening – nothing fancy.

April 2012 Wallpaper

Dave — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 14:07:41 +0000

Two years ago this April we we’re listening to the river pounding its way through our backyard (and part of our shoreline was, bit by bit, relocated to Concord). Two years later and we’re in a bit of a drought. I pulled this image from 2006, when the weather conditions were a bit similar. Instead of a “Spring Freshet” we have a babbling brook…

If you like the above image you can download it to your computer and use it as your desktop or tablet wallpaper. A few of the common screen sizes are available:

Download the 1024×768 version here. (Perfect for your iPad)

Download the 1280×1024 version here.

Download the 1680×1050 version here.

Technical stuff:

Canon 1D Mark II, 24-70mm f/2.8 at 24mm and f/18. 8 second exposure. ISO 100. (filtering not recorded, likely a polarizer)

Processed with Lightroom 4: Moderate contrast enhancement, dust spot removal and some clever tweaking to hide some drops of water on the lens (one removed by cropping, see if you can “spot” the other spot.)

Girl Scouts Celebrate their 100th Anniversary

Dave — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:18:34 +0000

Girl Scouting in the United States started 100 years ago in 1912. Just a few years later the first Girl Scout troop in Maynard was formed. Several hundred Maynard Girl Scouts, past and present, gathered at Alumni Field to recite the Girl Scout Promise at 7:12pm (19:12… very clever girl scouts…)

My son, Jay, was kind enough to be a second shooter on this event. His photos have camera id 580, mine are from 491. I also had a wide-angle shot up on the press box with an intervalometer taking an shot every 10 seconds. These shots were assembled into a time-lapse movie of the event (see below).

You can see more of the photographs at: http://community.dmg-photography.com/2012-gs-centennial

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Technical: Jay had the 7D with a 24-70mm on a monopod. I was shooting with a 40D, 70-200mm f/2.8 IS handheld. The time-lapse was done with a 5DMk2 on sticks with a 16-35mm f/2.8 and an intervalometer. I set the 5D to automatic exposure using a spot meter aimed at the grass in the center of the field, which gave a pretty good constant medium tone. Photos processed with Lightroom 4 — mostly minor exposure tweaks. The video frames were exported from Lightroom 4, imported into Final Cut Pro X (which crashed my computer twice adding the titles — yikes!).

March 2012 Wallpaper

Dave — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 15:25:15 +0000

March arrived hear like a lion (it’s still snowing as I write this) but until yesterday it felt a lot like Spring here and I suspect that feeling will return soon enough.

This is a photograph of Nashoba Brook in Acton taken a couple of years ago. There is a small mill building next to the brook — perhaps a pencil mill (they used to make pencils along the brook).

I’ll use this opportunity to also plug an upcoming film festival — OARS, our local river stewardship organization, is hosting the Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival on Wednesday, March 7th at the Fine Arts Theater in Maynard. Come to town, grab a little dinner before or after, and enjoy a wide range of short films featuring people working to raise awareness of our environment. To learn more and reserve tickets (this show often sells out) visit the OARS website.

If you like the above image you can download it to your computer and use it as your desktop or tablet wallpaper. A few of the common screen sizes are available:

Download the 1024×768 version here. (Perfect for your iPad)

Download the 1280×1024 version here.

Download the 1680×1050 version here.

Technical stuff:

Canon 5D Mark II, 24-70mm f/2.8 at 24mm and f/16. 1/8 second exposure. ISO 1600. (filtering not recorded, likely a polarizer)

Processed with Lightroom 3: this is a pseudo-HDR image: essentially compressing the shadows and highlights and stretching out the mid tones. The goal was to keep the shadows of the stream while not losing detail in the trees/sky. Consequently a fair amount of fill light and black point to restore contrast, clarity +44, vibrance -21, saturation -15 (restoring something closer to natural color saturation). A bit of dodging was done in the lower left-corner for this rendition so the calendar wouldn’t be lost amongst the rocks.

Peyton’s River’s Edge Restaurant

Dave — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 14:57:09 +0000

A few weeks ago Jason Carron and Nicolas Leo were searching for some photography that connected their new restaurant, Peyton’s River’s Edge, to both the river that flows behind the restaurant and the town they are in. In addition to historical photographs they selected nine of my river and town photographs for the walls of the restaurant.

Here are a few of them being installed (I forgot to grab a shot of them in place — I will correct this soon). We went with black&white versions of the images so they would provide a consistent feel across the wall. It’s a nice mixture of Assabet River scenics and some iconic views of our little town. Overall everyone is happy with the results which is great.

I will have a small placard near the entrance with this QR Code that will lead interested patrons to a page with more information about the photographs and links to the Maynard Historical Society and OARS, our local river stewardship organization.

Long Exposures

Dave — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 01:37:23 +0000

Exploring long exposures: 10 seconds

Barred Owl at ARNWR

Dave — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 01:48:36 +0000

I had posted a quick snapshot this beautiful bird on Facebook a couple of weeks ago, but forgot to post the edited version here. We were leaving the Assabet River NWR and spotted this fellow on a fencepost just off of the driveway. We backed up slowly and it hung around while I contorted myself to get the camera out of the back of the car. Shot a few seconds of video as well (just propped on the car window). After admiring and photographing for a few minutes we left him/her in peace to find dinner.

Technical: Canon 7D, 70-200mm f/2.8L at 200mm, 1/320 at f2.8, ISO 16oo, semi-handheld. Lightroom 3: tiny bit of fill, clarity +20, aggressive sharpening/masking, dodged the eyes a smidge, burned the background 0.7 stop just to pop the subject a bit more.

River Abstracts

Dave — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 23:45:04 +0000

OK, maybe not true abstracts, but bending in that direction. I spent a bit of time this afternoon looking to do some long-exposure work with the river – in broad daylight…

My goal is to continue to explore the boundary between the surface and what lies below and that requires some interesting lighting conditions and ways of visually working into the water column without getting too wet in the process.

The really cool part of these images, for me, only appears in good-size prints. The water’s surface is inscribed with patterns of light so as you pull back you see what is below but upon closer inspection you can tell that there is a layer of water above (see zoomed inset below).

Technical stuff: Canon 5D Mark 2, 24-70mm f/2.8L, exposure times vary but generally around 10 seconds, f/18 to f/22, ISO 100, 3 stop ND filter stacked with 2 polarizers. I believe the first image was done with the ND filter, polarizer and a 3-stop graduated ND filter running left to right. Lightroom processing varies slightly between images but generally fill +10, black +9, vibrance +5-+15, strong contrast curve. Some of the images pulled down the saturation of the red and orange channels to remove some color casting caused, no doubt, by the mass of filters piled up in front of the lens. (That these photos work in color at all was pretty amazing. I was expecting a lot more skewing of colors.)

February 2012 Wallpaper

Dave — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 23:39:40 +0000

When did February arrive? Where did January go? Yikes!

Here’s an image taken a couple of weeks ago in the backyard. Not a big departure from January’s I admit but I can’t help stare at water…

If you like the above image you can download it to your computer and use it as your desktop or tablet wallpaper. A few of the common screen sizes are available:

Download the 1024×768 version here. (Perfect for your iPad)

Download the 1280×1024 version here.

Download the 1680×1050 version here.

Technical stuff:

Canon 5D Mark II, 100-400mm f/4.5 at f/9 and 250mm. 0.6 second exposure. ISO 160. (0.9 ND and polarizing filter)

Processed with Lightroom 3: bit of fill light and black point, clarity +43, vibrance +0. (And I just noticed some dust spotting might have been useful… sigh!)